


Through Death We’ll Mend

by yopumpkinhead



Category: Coldfire Trilogy - C. S. Friedman
Genre: Blood and Injury, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-09 21:13:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12896943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yopumpkinhead/pseuds/yopumpkinhead
Summary: An earthquake gives Damien one last chance to confront the mysterious young man with the very specific theory about the Hunter's final moments.





	Through Death We’ll Mend

**Author's Note:**

  * For [katonahottinroof](https://archiveofourown.org/users/katonahottinroof/gifts).



> You asked for "adventures post-canon with Damien and Gerald... the idea that here is the one person left who truly understands what the other has gone through (or as near as) is a definite plus!" 
> 
> Technically Gerald isn't around post-canon, so I did my best. :) I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed writing it!

_“What are you suggesting?” he demanded._

_“What if the Hunter wanted to stage his own death? What if his would-be killer agreed that that was the best course? What if it was enough for both of them that the Hunter died—the legend—but something of the man at its core survived? That would be death of a kind, wouldn’t it? Surely the sacrifice of one’s identity could be seen as a kind of suicide. Perhaps enough to wield some power even in this altered forum. Think about it,” the youth urged. “It would have to be a sacrifice that came from the soul itself, not just a surface gesture. A true death, from which there could be no resurrection. The body that walked away from that night might never lay claim to its true name again, or connect itself to its previous life in word or deed.” He paused. “It couldn’t even discuss its own fate in any manner except the most impersonal. To do otherwise would be to join itself to the part that had died, and thus consummate the destruction of the whole.”_

_It took Damien a minute to find his voice. The thought was so incredible...._ But no, _he thought,_ not incredible at all. Not if you knew Gerald Tarrant, and what he was capable of.

_He looked into those eyes—dark, so dark, and not a young man’s at all, not by a long shot—and managed, “Your name.” Finding his voice somewhere, managing to shape it into words. “You never did tell me what it was.”_

_For a long, silent time the youth looked at him. Just looked at him. As if the look was a kind of dare, Damien thought. As if he wanted to give him time to try to see another man in his eyes, to superimpose another man’s life over his own._

_“No,” he said at last. Glancing once more toward the burning Forest, as if the answer were there. “I didn‘t, did I?” Once more a faint smile touched the corner of his lips; the fleeting minimalism of the expression was so familiar that Damien didn’t know how to respond. Did one celebrate such a resemblance, or mourn what it implied? “Does it matter?”_

_“No,” he whispered. “Not really.”_

_An expression that Damien couldn’t begin to read flickered across the youth’s face. Something strange, intensely human, an emotion that would have been ill-suited to the Hunter’s former mien. Affection? Regret? “Good-bye, Damien Vryce.” The youth bowed ever so slightly, his eyes never leaving Vryce’s own. “Good luck.”_

* * *

The young man with the old eyes had gone halfway across the viewing terrace when he stopped abruptly. Though his back was to Damien, his posture - tense, strained, gaze fixed on the fae-currents at his feet - was as familiar as his other movements. Lost in contemplation, Damien almost didn't remember what such an examination meant.

Then the man straightened, and in a voice pitched to cut through the chatter of the tourists, shouted, “ _Earthquake!_ ”

The wooden platform beneath Damien's feet began to shake even as the word left the man’s lips. He grabbed for the railing to brace himself—

—and the world heaved, as violently as though the Black Ridge itself sought to shake the human intruders from its flanks. The wooden planks, so hastily installed, crumbled out from under Damien and he plunged down into the shadowed pass below. Wood and stone and human bodies plummeted atop him, and he lost track of the world for several long seconds.

Eventually Damien realized that he lay at an awkward angle, head pointed downslope, half his body buried in rubble. Any Core-light that might have made it past the mushroom cloud over the burning Forest stood no chance of reaching this far down into the gap in the mountains; the only illumination came from a small fire burning somewhere beyond another heap of fallen rock. The collapse of the platform had created a small cave of sorts, its floor littered with shattered wood and broken tableware from tourists’ dinners, its ceiling formed by a creaking, precariously-balanced mass of rocks and wood held up by a few remaining support beams. Somewhere outside, Damien heard shouts and screams as the wounded cried for help and rescuers began their desperate search through the destruction. Hopefully none of them were walking on the unsteady mass above him; Damien doubted it could take much additional stress.

In the dim light of the fire, he could just make out the rubble that buried him, as well as two bodies sprawled nearby. One was a woman, her back arched over the wooden plank that had impaled her. Blood stained its tip where it jutted up from between her ribs, and though her body jerked with her desperate attempts to breathe, it was clear that she would be dead within minutes. The other body was that of a man, blood pooled darkly around his arm and side, and Damien's heart froze for an instant before he realized it wasn't the dark-haired youth who’d spoken to him.

Then he heard the wheezing raspy breaths echoing off the rocky walls, and realized the man was still alive. The healer in Damien kicked in, and he struggled free of the rubble piled on his legs. He was bleeding too, from several shallow cuts along his arms and legs, but nothing was broken and he was in no danger of bleeding out. He crawled over to the injured man first, forced to keep his head low to avoid cracking his skull against the rocks piled precariously overhead. There was nothing he could do to save the dying woman, but he might be able to help the man. The ground shook beneath him again as he moved, the first of probably many aftershocks, and Damien prayed that the rocks wouldn't collapse and kill him and whoever else was trapped down here.

It was the work of a minute to ascertain the man's injuries: a deep gouge down the inside of his upper arm, though fortunately the big artery that ran under the armpit was intact; as well as a knot on his forehead, already bruising, which almost certainly meant a concussion. Serious wounds but not likely fatal, so Damien turned his attention to the dying woman.

She was pale of skin and dark of hair, the kind of woman who must have grown up knowing she was one unlucky night from becoming the Hunter's next victim. She'd probably come to see the Forest burn and celebrate her newfound freedom from the terror of Erna’s darkest legend - only to die in one of its most common disasters. Her eyes were open but unseeing, and her breathing had already slowed to painful wet hitches. A delicate Earth-disk, engraved with initials on the back, dangled from her neck: a sign that she was a Church faithful. Damien found her hand and held it, murmuring a prayer. He might not be a priest any more, but such technicalities mattered little to the dying, and he thought the woman relaxed ever so slightly as her last breaths left her. At least she hadn't died alone.

When she was still, Damien let go of her hand and turned back to the wounded man. A few months ago, it would have been little effort to Heal him. Now, thanks to the new Pattern imposed upon the fae by Gerald Tarrant and consecrated by the Patriarch, all Damien could do was bandage the bleeding arm with strips of cloth torn from the man's shirt. He was just tying off the bandage when a groan caught his attention. Another victim of the earthquake, and he left the unconscious man to search for the new survivor. He had to hope this one was mobile; carrying one man was going to be difficult enough.

The groan sounded again, closer and clearly pained, this time accompanied by a scrabble of movement. Damien crawled around the upended remnants of a dining table and benches, and found the dark-haired young man pushing himself to a sitting position against the rocky wall. One leg was stretched awkwardly in front of him and his expensive clothes had been torn in several places, blood seeping from the cuts beneath. His face was pale under its olive tone, visible even in the dim flickering light, and his mouth was tight with pain.

He looked up sharply as Damien moved into his corner, his dark eyes widening as he recognized him. Damien forced a smile onto his own face and said, “Guess that luck didn’t get me very far.”

“So it seems,” the young man agreed. His mouth twitched as though he was trying to smile, but the expression became a grimace as another aftershock rattled them. He gripped his leg, hissing through his teeth. “Broken,” he said to Damien. “A fractured tibia, unless I miss my guess.”

“Anything else serious?” Damien asked. He couldn't see any major injuries, but the way the man sat could have hidden several nasty wounds.

“Not that I can tell,” he answered. “Did you see a way out of here?”

Damien shook his head, already focused on his examination of the man’s leg. A swollen spot a few inches below the knee confirmed the broken leg diagnosis. Damien really needed better tools - and preferably some kind of anesthetic - to set it properly; hopefully the rescuers reached them soon. “There's not much room to move around,” he said as he worked. “But I haven't checked it all out yet, either.”

“Perhaps you could do that, then?” the man said, and the tone was so familiar that Damien very nearly said the name that hovered at the tip of his tongue.

With difficulty, he swallowed it down, and said only, “I will, once I've tended the wounded.” He met the young man's eyes. “Which includes you.”

“There's little you can do for me here,” the man pointed out.

“Yeah, well, now I know that, don't I?” Damien retorted. God, this was so familiar, this back-and-forth that no longer held any real heat. He bit down on the name that tried again to escape his lips, and said instead, “What's your name? I think it matters a little more now.”

Dark eyes searched his face, the dim light from the burning rubble picking out golden stars in their depths. Finally the young man tilted his head in acknowledgement. “Michel Yoshimo,” he said.

“Michel,” Damien repeated, and tried to ignore the pang in his heart. _Gerald Tarrant is gone,_ he reminded himself firmly. _Get used to it._

The ceiling creaked, dust and pebbles rattling down on them. Michel glanced up, his mouth tightening. “Perhaps you could conduct that search for a way out now,” he suggested dryly, though Damien knew him well enough - _No,_ he corrected himself, _he didn't know this man at all, no matter how much he might resemble another_ \- but still Damien heard the undercurrent of fear in his voice.

“Yeah,” he muttered, and crawled away.

It didn't take long to make a circuit of the little cave, and Damien returned to Michel's corner to report, “Not much. There's a real small tunnel over there” - with a nod toward the far end of the cave - “but it'll be a hell of a tight squeeze for me. You could probably make it, but there's no guarantee it goes anywhere.”

“If it's more stable than this,” Michel said, with another glance at the creaking ceiling, “then we’ve little choice but to chance it. The aftershocks are far from over, and I don't trust that to hold much longer.”

Damien glanced up too. Was it his imagination, or had the sagging beams sunk lower? _Please,_ he prayed _, if you really have given this soul another chance, don't end it here. Help me get him out safely, so he can make the most of Your gift._

His only response was a low angry rumble from the stone beneath his knees: a reminder that if he did want to save Michel from a rocky grave, he needed to get moving.

Michel shifted, trying to get his good leg under him so he could crawl on his hands and knees as Damien was. Damien caught his arm to help him, and remembered not to be surprised by the living heat of the man's skin. Then he led the way across the cave to the little hole he’d found. They had to pass the other victims to get there, and Damien paused long enough to check that the unconscious man was still breathing. He was, though shallowly; clearly he wouldn’t be walking out of here on his own. Damien would have to find a way to carry him.

When Damien looked up, he found Michel staring at the dead woman, an odd expression on his face. Damien couldn't begin to guess what Michel was thinking, looking at this woman who could have been the Hunter's next victim if things had turned out a little differently. If some spark of the man who’d once been Gerald Tarrant truly still lived on in Michel, could he even contemplate such a thing, or would that risk the fragile bargain that allowed him to live?

As if sensing Damien's scrutiny, Michel looked up at him and shook his head. “Such a waste of life,” he murmured.

Was that some remnant of the Hunter talking, regretting the loss of prey? Or was it Tarrant, mouthing the platitudes of the living as he’d done to humor Damien? Or was it just Michel, a young man honestly expressing regret over a tragedy? Damien couldn't tell, and was surprised to find that it didn't bother him as much as it should. “Yeah,” he muttered back, and turned away to point to a corner of the cave. “That's the tunnel. If it's really a tunnel and not just a deeper hole.”

Michel bent down on his elbows to peer into the hole; Damien wondered if the currents of fae helped him as they had once helped another man. “Promising,” Michel judged finally. “More so than staying here.” Then he added, with a nod toward the unconscious man, “Will you be able to drag him along?”

Damien stared at him. Michel said blandly, “What's wrong?”

There was the slightest edge to his tone, not quite a warning. Damien shook himself. “Nothing,” he said. “Just… the last guy I traveled with would have wanted to leave him to die.”

“Then it's a good thing you're no longer traveling with him, isn't it?” Michel said.

Damien snorted. In truth, he’d give an awful lot to have that argument again with Tarrant. But perhaps this was better, strange as it was. Michel had volunteered the idea of bringing the man, rather than abandoning him. Whoever or whatever he might be, he had that much compassion in him, and the freedom to express it.

Damien crawled over to the unconscious man, then paused, and passed him to go to the dead woman instead. He gently pulled the engraved Earth-disk from around her neck and tucked it into a pocket. If the cave collapsed and her body was lost, at least her family might have that much to remember her by. That done, he returned to the unconscious man. Unprompted, Michel unclasped his cloak and held it out; combined with Damien's belt, plus the man's, it served as a makeshift stretcher which Damien could drag along behind him.

Another aftershock hit as they worked, collapsing the back corner of the cave where Michel had been sitting. The ceiling groaned, bits of debris pattering around them. They had minutes, maybe less. Damien gestured Michel ahead of him into the tunnel. Michel was leaner than he, and even if the tunnel grew too narrow for Damien, Michel might still be able to squeeze out.

Despite all the nightmares, both metaphorical and literal, Damien had been through in the past few years, crawling through that tunnel was one of the most terrifying things he’d done. The faint light from the fire vanished immediately, leaving them - or at least Damien, who didn't have an adept’s sight - in utter darkness. The Black Ridge pressed close around him, his shoulders scraping the rock every time he moved. Aftershocks shook the mountain, dropping sharp-edged pebbles into the tunnel which they then had to crawl over despite the deep cuts they left behind. Michel was clearly having a hard time of it, his broken leg dragging, his breath hitching in pain whenever he had to use it to push himself onward. The unconscious man was a dead weight dragging behind Damien, sapping his strength, making it that much harder to haul himself forward as the tunnel began to slope downward.

Then Michel gasped, and Damien's heart froze for a moment before he realized that it had been a sound of relief. Michel’s good foot scrabbled against the stone, then he was gone and light flooded the tunnel. Damien hauled himself down after him, scraping aside dirt and rock around the opening until it was wide enough for his shoulders. Michel grasped his wrists and helped pull him the last few feet, then - again unprompted - reached around him to help drag the unconscious man out of the tunnel. Even as he did, another aftershock hit, hard enough to be a quake in its own right. Dust and dirt exploded out from the tunnel’s mouth as it collapsed, and Damien threw an arm over his eyes to protect them.

When the shaking finally stopped, Damien lowered his arm and looked around. They’d emerged onto the side of the Black Ridge, on a narrow shelf jutting out from sheer black rock that stretched up thirty feet over their heads and much, much farther down to the valley floor. The tunnel had apparently been the bottom of a long narrow crevice that ran through the rock away from the pass where the viewing platform had been built, now entirely filled in with fallen rubble. Craning his neck, Damien saw the light of torches flashing overhead - searchers. He shouted at them, his voice cracking from dust, and finally the light began to grow brighter.

A head poked out over the edge of the ridge high above them, backlit by torchlight. A woman’s voice called, “Hey! Are you hurt?”

“Nothing life-threatening,” Damien shouted back. “Broken bones and cuts, probably a concussion.” He jerked a thumb at the unconscious man, then added, “I don’t know how long this ledge will last, though.”

The woman’s head tilted as she studied their ledge, then she nodded. “I’ll get someone over here with rope,” she said. “Just hang on!”

She vanished back over the ridge, and Damien sat back against the stone wall with a sigh. Nothing to do now but wait. The unconscious man lay still on the ground, but his chest moved up and down steadily. Michel sat beside Damien, his injured leg stretched out in front of him, the other drawn up so he could rest his arm on his knee.

For a minute or two, they sat in silence. Their ledge faced the Forest, giving them a view nearly as good as the one from the now-demolished viewing platform. Flames roared across the Hunter's lands, and perhaps it was the blood loss talking but the red light licking at the underside of the mushroom cloud reminded Damien of the way the volcano had looked, in that moment before Gerald Tarrant gave his life to save a world that hated him.

_No_ , Damien corrected himself. The world hated the _Hunter_ , and rightfully so. Whatever good Gerald Tarrant had done, whatever the Prophet’s legacy, the Hunter was a monster who had slaughtered thousands, perhaps millions, of people over his nine-hundred-year unlife. And yet… Where did one draw the line between them? Where did the undead monster end and the man begin? Had his ruthlessness been due only to the Hunter's evil priorities, or had Tarrant's fierce intellect contributed? How did one even begin to answer such questions?

“It's incredible, isn't it?” Michel asked, his quiet voice breaking into Damien's thoughts. He nodded toward the flames. “That such a legend should burn so easily.”

“Fire was always his weakness,” Damien said softly. Remembering Tarrant burning in the Fire of the Earth, the lava-drenched nightmare that had so prominently featured in the man's personal Hell. Hesitantly, he asked, “What does it look like? The fae down there. Is it…”

Michel cocked his head, studying Damien's face for a moment before turning to look at the Forest. “Wild,” he said quietly. “That much hasn't changed. Jahanna was a locus of fae currents long before the Hunter chose it for his stronghold. But…” He hesitated, seeming to choose his words with great care. “It's more pure now. I hadn't realized just how much the Hunter's nature had changed the currents. I hadn't thought even he had such influence.”

Damien glanced at him, curious, but Michel was still watching the flames. Maybe it was only that noticing a gradual change in one's surroundings over centuries was far harder than seeing such a sharp difference as flowed through the currents below. Or perhaps Michel meant something more. Neither Tarrant nor Damien had expected what had happened when Tarrant made his Sacrifice on top of Shaitan. Vain the man might have been, but perhaps even he hadn't been so arrogant as to assume his mere existence had such power.

His gaze still on the Forest, Michel asked, “What do you think he would have thought about all this?”

“Hell if I know,” Damien said. Memory brought a hint of a smile to his lips. “He always surprised me.” Michel smirked, his dark eyes glittering in the firelight. Damien added, more somberly, “I think he would have mourned it, even though he knew it was necessary.”

“Was it?” Michel asked, his voice little more than a whisper. “Necessary?”

“He dreamed of Earth,” Damien said. Resisting the urge to look over at Michel, to scream _you know what he dreamed about, what he still dreams about!_ “He dreamed of a world where humanity could regain the heritage denied us by the fae—”

“Denied?” Michel interrupted. “We lost so much in the First Sacrifice, but we gained so much as well, thanks to the fae.” He gestured upward, toward the destroyed viewing platform. “A few months ago, that platform would have been so heavily warded against quakes that we’d all be enjoying the sights right now, rather than suffering and dying. That's gone now. Already quake-wards in Jaggonath are selling for millions. Millions! Because unless someone's foolish enough to give his life for them, no more will ever be made.”

Damien had to close his eyes against a sudden wave of grief. Michel didn't exactly look the way Tarrant had when he got excited - Michel was fierce, animated, and his voice had an orator's strength. But oh, Damien could imagine the Prophet speaking thus, that fiery passion carrying his words to the faithful. And even in Tarrant’s icy demeanor, hints of that passion had remained, so that hearing it from Michel was a kick in the gut.

Apparently unaware of Damien’s thoughts, Michel was still talking: “And what about the wards that warn of incoming tsunami waves, that protect merchants’ ships? Our ports are vulnerable now. Trade will be restricted to land, slower and far more dangerous for the generations it’ll take to clear out the last of the faeborn.”

“Faraday has mechanical alarms,” Damien pointed out, then corrected himself. “ _Had_ alarms. And they worked pretty damned well.” _As long as there’s no Iezu around blinding their watchers to their message._ “Earth had tsunami, and no fae to warn them. They had earthquakes, too. Maybe not as many as we do here on Erna, but they reached the stars despite the quakes.” He shook his head. “Hell, I hadn’t seen anything like Jaggonath’s system of quake-wards until I came east. Ganji-on-the-Cliffs has nothing like that, and we get by just fine.”

“Ganji-on-the-Cliffs has far fewer quakes, or so I’ve heard,” Michel retorted.

“So some cities will have to relocate,” Damien said. “Or learn to build better, the way they did on Earth. Or both. Losing the fae isn’t the end of the world.”

Michel closed his eyes, turning away as if in pain ( _and for a moment Damien saw another man’s visage over top of his, pale and drawn as he whispered his own damnation_ ). “You can say that,” Michel said, his voice strained. “You aren’t an adept.”

“No, I’m not,” Damien shot back. “But I am - I was - a Healer, and now I can’t do that any more than you can. And I hate it. I hate seeing people in pain and not being able to help.” He gestured to Michel’s leg, to the unconscious man beside them. “But I’m damned well going to learn how to get by. How to do something with my life that doesn’t involve the fae. Gerald Tarrant and the Patriarch didn’t vulking sacrifice their lives so spoiled rich adept brats could complain about how things are so much harder now that they can’t use the fae for everything.”

Michel turned around to stare at him, naked surprise in his dark eyes. Damien matched his stare evenly, waiting, and finally Michel laughed softly and looked away again. “No,” he whispered. “I suppose they didn’t.” A pause while he watched the Forest burn, then, “Do you really believe that? That humans can achieve on Erna what they did on Earth, without the fae opposing them?”

“I do,” Damien answered. He looked out over the Forest as well, shifting to put his back against the side of the cliff. The ground rumbled gently beneath him, but it wasn’t enough to worry about. “I’ve seen what humanity can do with only faith to protect against faeborn interference. I’ve seen what one man accomplished through sheer bullheaded stubbornness. It might take us some time to adapt, but I believe we can do it.”

Michel didn’t answer, but seemed to consider the words, and finally nodded. They sat in silence for a while, Michel apparently lost in thought, Damien remembering the cities of the eastern continent and their incredible technological achievements, Gerald Tarrant’s Earthborn _telescope_ he’d made to view the moons without any fae at all.

Then Michel said, “So where will you go from here?” Damien glanced at him, surprised; Michel gestured up to where the destroyed inn and viewing platform had been, and said dryly, “Given the state of the accommodations, I can’t imagine you’re going to stay here much longer.”

Damien hesitated. That was exactly the question he’d been pondering when Michel had first found him, and he wasn’t sure he had any more of an answer now than he’d had then. Except… perhaps he did, thanks to their conversation. “Home,” he said. The word felt right in his mouth, and he nodded and repeated, “Home. Back west, to Ganji. See how my mother is doing, whether my brother finally got married. I’ve been away too long.”

Was it his imagination, or had a flicker of disappointment crossed Michel’s face? Michel had turned when he’d gestured, and now his back was to the burning Forest, casting his face in shadows which hid his minimalist expression. Disappointment, or perhaps regret, that same emotion that he’d shown for an instant when he’d said good-bye on the platform, what felt like hours ago.

On impulse, Damien said, “What about you? You’ve seen the legend burn, how about coming west and seeing how Ganji handles quakes?”

He regretted the words the instant they left his mouth. If he was wrong about Michel’s identity, then such an offer was strange at best, intrusive at worst - a rich young man from a well-off family had no reason to brave the Dividers with an aging ex-priest who’d spent the last three years traveling with one of Erna’s greatest monsters. But if he was right…

If he was right about Michel, if what Michel had said about Gerald Tarrant’s last shot at avoiding death was true… then traveling with Damien - spending _any_ more time with Damien than circumstances had already forced him to - was a risk so big it was all but suicide. One of them was sure to slip up eventually, and that last desperate plan would have been for nothing.

Damien held his breath, struggling to keep his expression blank. As if the offer meant nothing, no more than a casual suggestion to a stranger whose handling of a single life-threatening situation implied that he might make a decent traveling companion.

Then Michel said, very quietly, “I would like that.”

For a moment Damien didn’t process the words, so sure was he that the answer would be _no_. But Michel smiled, ever so slightly, that faint and oh-so-familiar expression that made Damien’s chest ache.

“I’ve never been west of the Dividers,” Michel continued, his tone more casual now. “And I do so enjoy traveling to new and exciting places.”

Damien couldn’t move, his eyes still on Michel’s face. It was absolute suicide for the man who had once been Gerald Tarrant to travel with Damien again - he’d be walking a line so razor-thin that Damien would be hard-pressed to even see it. And yet… that was exactly what he’d done for the last three years, upholding his pact with the Unnamed even as he saved first Ciani and the rakh from the Master of Lema, then the entire eastern continent from the schemes of the Undying Prince. And even if he’d slipped up at the end…

Gerald Tarrant had always learned from his mistakes.

Finally Damien managed to find his voice. Made it as casual as he could, because he’d damn well better start practicing now. “Great. It’ll take your leg a while to heal, but we can use that time to get supplies, make a plan. Crossing the Dividers isn’t exactly easy.”

“I imagine not,” Michel agreed, his voice light. “But that’s what makes it interesting.” His eyes sparkled in the distant firelight, a flash of humor that was nothing like the Hunter’s icy aloofness, and everything like Gerald Tarrant’s dry wit.

Damien turned back to the view of the burning Forest, leaning back against the cliff face and settling himself more comfortably on the sharp rocks. The rescuers would return with ropes soon, and he and Michel would get off this damned mountain and away from the land that had nearly killed them both. But in the meantime, they’d watch the Hunter’s funeral pyre together.

And for the first time since Damien had walked out of the Hunter’s keep all those months ago, he felt like he was going to be all right.


End file.
